Ashes, Ashes
by darthvair65
Summary: Once way or another, you will join in the danse macabre. Halloween fic, in which Axel is a doctor during the Black Plague.


**Title: **Ashes, Ashes

**Pairing:** vague Axel/Roxas

**Rating: ** R

**Word Count: **4000

**A/N:** I do not own Kingdom Hearts, but I do get a kick out of writing for the fandom. I remember learning the true meaning behind the "Ring Around the Rosey" song and game we used to play as kids, and loving how hilariously morbid it was for us to sing. Happy Halloween, all 3

**Warnings: **descriptions of the Bubonic Plague/Black Death, language, gore

**Summary: **Once way or another, you will join in the danse macabre.

The world came within centimeters of collapsing during the fourteenth century. The whole world, thousands of years of progressing civilization, was very nearly brought to ruin within the span of only a few years; in a world divided and fraught with war, witch hunts, and disease, it was not the fault of some rampaging army or curse upon humanity (or maybe it was) but of a tiny, microscopic insect that brought the Western world to its knees.

An insect, once infected, moved from rat carriers to humans and back rather easily, spreading the disease like wildfire. It began with a rash, followed by bulbous growths that began to appear on victims' necks, groins, and beneath the armpits – red swellings that turned black with disease and ached, bringing its victims to their knees in tremendous pain. Fevers rose dramatically, and then the insides putrefied and the victims began to vomit blood. Within days, even many times even hours, they were dead. No house was safe from the curse.

There were many words for it, though none can capture the enormity of its destructive capabilities; contemporaries called it the pestilence, the plague, the apocalypse. Holy men, seeing the plague as punishment for universal sins, called it the Lord's judgment on humanity, and though those men assumed their own lives would be spared they were dragged down just as easily.

The plague was both elusive and ever-present; one could not move from place to place and not see its complete and total destruction of mankind and human decency. All of the normal methods of prevention proved futile and even worse the sickness struck all – reducing carefully constructed barriers and social classes to dust. It struck the young and old, the weak and strong, the pious and the heretics. It spread like wildfire, striking any and all who walked in its invisible path and leaving fields and pits filled with the dead behind.

In the year 1348, a small village a few miles beyond the cosmopolitan city of Venice was nearly laid to waste by the plague. The village's name isn't important because like so many others it was lost to history, destroyed in its own funeral pyre. Only one person walked away from the devastation – a man hooded and cloaked, with a long white beak protruding like a bird's from under his hood.

This was a man the sick had called _dottore._ He was a physician, a plague doctor who moved from town to infected town to try and heal those stricken before they expired painfully. He had failed in the last village, and the next that called to him would hopefully help him gain some credibility with his skills. The town's remaining citizens had pooled what funds they had to hire him, many with children or spouses who chanted "_Dottore, dottore,"_ in weak, wheezing voices.

By the time _il dottore_ arrived in his next destination most of those voices had expired, leaving new ones in their stead. The misty dawn broke over the edge of the town, fog settling close to the ground. At first, only the squelching sounds of a single pair of boots navigating the muck alerted the remaining townsfolk to his arrival. Then, the figure of _il dottore_ rose out of the fog slowly, his form coming into view. He cut an imposing, terrifying figure; abnormally tall and thin, and dressed in a long, thick black cloak, the man's outfit was completed by the mask which set him apart as a doctor of medicine: the pale white beak was long and curved, protruding from the middle of his face. His eyes were hidden by two glass lenses, which allowed him to see through the miasmas that rose from the ground and poisoned the villagers. The beak was filled with fragrant rose petals, flowers, and foreign spices to mask the stench of the putrefied flesh and reeking corpses.

Another figure trailed a little bit behind _il dottore_, though no one paid any attention to his existence – a boy, not quite full-grown, with flaxen hair and piercing blue eyes that surveyed the villagers with remarkable disdain. His skin was white, pristine amongst the mud and shit and refuse. The boy was barefoot and wearing only a loose shirt and tattered breeches, but his feet made no sound as they followed in _il dottore's _footprints. But while the other man stepped around the decaying corpses that had not yet been dragged to the burial pit, his shadow had no qualms stepping on the bodies. Looking at his expression, he might have been innocently standing on a stool rather than a corpse. The boy looked around at the disorder and death permeating the town and whistled.

"Got your work cut out for you here," the boy commented snidely. "Don't bother, just torch the place."

_Il dottore_ ignored him, scanning the town square through his dark lenses for the town's mayor; spotting him, he made his way over, still ignoring the boy.

The boy, meanwhile, was poking at still-twitching bodies with his bare feet, sticking toes into burst pustules that had once tormented the living. "This town's gonna burn, Axel," the boy shouted, half threatening and half gleeful as he followed. "Just like the last one."

Xxx

Axel couldn't quite pinpoint when he stopped being afraid of the shadow that was following him – but he remembered the day it began.

Three months ago, the plague had decimated yet another small village near Padua. Axel had recently finished his medical training, and was eager to begin his career as a plague doctor and earn a living for himself in the process. It was a risky job, but if he could actually help people Axel thought that maybe he'd earn a good name for himself. By the time he'd arrived, most of the village was sick and dying with the dreaded pestilence. There were a scant few still holding on by threads of life, but they couldn't continue on like that forever. Most, Axel knew, would perish.

There was one boy though, a young man, who he was almost sure he could save. The boy – Roxas was his name – was fighting the disease valiantly, but Axel could see the boy's light failing steadily. He was already skin and bones, product of a bad winter and a poor harvest. The buboes covering his armpits, neck, and groin were large and swelled, tinged black with the poison destroying his body. Axel tried everything his medical training had suggested for such a sickness – he bled the boy in small doses, cutting his skin to let the poison in his blood out, tried to rebalance the humors wreaking havoc, made him drink herbal infusions, anything and everything he could think of.

Despite Axel's best efforts, the boy died choking on his own blood, and was tossed into the mass burial pit along with his already deceased family.

It was the first time Axel felt truly guilty about failing to save someone. This boy had given him some hope that there was a chance for him, but in the end, he too fell to the demons' curse. When Axel walked by the stinking, open mass grave the next morning, mask filled with a fresh bunch of fragrant herbs, he swore he heard something crawl back out after him. When he looked back, Axel swallowed and made silent prayers to the Blessed Virgin. The boy, Roxas, whose lifeless fingers had slipped through his gloved ones not a day before, was standing there bold as brass; his naked body was covered in blood and mud and excrement, still bloated and carrying the black pustules that had been his undoing. His neck, which Axel had been sure he'd heard snap when the boy's body joined the others, was still grotesquely broken, head tilting at a sharp angle against his shoulder. Slowly the boy's dead hands reached up and held both sides of his head, brutally snapping his neck back so his head was upright again.

But worst of all was the blackness in his eyes, and the broad slash of a grin across his face that truly terrified him; Axel made the sign of the cross across his chest.

"Hello, _dottore,_" was all it said; Axel turned around and walked, whispering prayers to the Virgin to protect him from the demon following him.

Over the last two months, the pustules had disappeared and the muck spread across his skin vanished, leaving only milky white flesh that he eventually covered up. No one else saw the boy, and no one else could hear him, even when he played with the dead bodies left out in the road. Sometimes Roxas would follow him blatantly; other times he would disappear for a short while, only for Axel to look up one day to see the blond spirit staring at him and Axel would nearly leap into the air in surprise. Axel had decided at some point that he was a figment of his imagination, that his mind was playing tricks on him with the face and voice he failed to save – until he got annoyed and threw a pan at Axel's head one day. It hit the wall above his head, and was enough for Axel to amend his former thesis. This was a spirit – an angry one.

Axel had often asked it what it wanted, only to have it laugh in his face like a maniac. The herbs intended to keep away the miasma seemed to work on it too, if only for a little while. The boy, the spirit, whatever it was, almost never left him; he was always there, and Axel wondered if this was his punishment for absolute failure in his field.

0o0

Axel's work was tireless and never-ending when he was called to a city for his medical services. The plague moved faster than anything else he'd ever seen; a strong, healthy man could be eating breakfast with his family but by nightfall, dining with his ancestors. Some of those it struck were able to hold on to life for a short while, but nearly all succumbed to its wrath. Axel was able to save some, to nurse them back to health, but it always seemed like luck.

At present, Axel's luck had turned its back on him.

He was tending to a boy, who had to have been close to Roxas' age when he perished, with a mop of thick brown hair and paling blue eyes. His grip on Axel's gloved hands was fading and weak, as was his breath. He – Sora, Axel remembered – was sweating profusely and moaning in pain.

"He's going to die," the spirit, Roxas, said casually, like they were talking about the weather. "There's honestly nothing you can do for him, he already belongs to Death."

"I must try," Axel muttered viciously through his mask, administering another draft of herbs to clean his blood of the toxin inside him. The boy coughed and gasped, barely swallowing the medicine.

Roxas laughed outright, bending over and smacking his knee in mirth. "You're ridiculous. He's half in the grave, but go on, keep trying. This is funny."

Moments later, Sora lost his battle with the plague; his breath slowed to a halt and blue eyes clouded over, frail hand falling from Axel's grip.

Axel sat there, staring blankly at the boy's lifeless body while Roxas laughed uproariously in the background, his empty hand trembling with anger and disappointment.

0o0

Roxas follows him sometimes in the guise of Death itself, wearing a tattered and flowing black robe and carrying a farmer's sickle. Axel has never seen him reap anyone – in fact he's pretty sure it's simply a way to torment him – but sometimes he'll catch a glimpse of Roxas' face and his sickle splattered with blood, like they'd recently killed. Then, a moment later, the blood is gone – leaving only pristine white skin behind.

0o0

Cattle began to drop dead.

Axel tries to tell the villagers that they are probably not getting the right amount of food, or that the plague struck them as well – but the villagers still begin to whisper that a witch is in their midst.

0o0

The talk of witches begins to take the village by storm; in their overwhelming fear and stress, they begin to blame the arrival of the plague on an older woman who had seemingly managed to avoid getting sick. The villagers claim to have seen her fly, that she brewed potions in her hut, that she must have been poisoning them the whole time. Under pressure from the group, the woman pleaded guilty to their charges.

Axel watched in horror from behind his mask as the woman was paraded out by remaining villagers and strapped to a may pole, screaming; they lit a fire under her feet and watched her burn.

And yet, the plague continued to ravage the town; but rather than listening to Axel they merely muttered that they simply hadn't found the responsible witch yet.

"I should leave," Axel muttered to himself after that.

"For once," Roxas said from behind him, deciding to add his two cents, "I think you might actually be right. This town's gonna burn, just like I told you, and it's going to burn itself."

And yet, Axel stayed.

0o0

Axel is trying to heal another, this time a woman on the verge of death when something happens. He's working feverishly, and the woman's family – who seem miraculously healthy despite the dire conditions – are standing on the other side of the room. Axel can tell she's probably not going to survive the next hour; her skin is nearly translucent and clammy, and the buboes that appeared on her body the previous night are black with poison. Axel felt for her pulse with his gloved fingers, confirming his thoughts that she was leaving the world of the living.

Then the woman reached out and grasped Axel's wrist, and Axel could see that her skin was crawling with fleas. It was utterly grotesque and Axel jerked his arm away like his skin had been burned. She died shortly thereafter, but Axel's skin still crawled even after they dragged her body away.

0o0

_In his dream, the dead danced._

_The dead crawled from their graves, straight up from out of the soil, bony fingers like claws in the dirt. Half-decayed bodies were stripped of their sunken flesh, leaving bone and sinew and blood splattering across the ground. Sloughing off their epidermises, the bones began to move in a jerky, wild dance reminiscent of barbarians. Their limbs were wild, the joints and bones clinking together; they held hands, moved in circles, limbs detaching and reattaching to different bodies. The skulls were pale white, starched and empty – eye sockets like endless voids in the deep._

_He felt one of the skeletons grab his wrist and pull him into their heathen dance, dragging him into a wild dance in the moonlight; then, to his horror, they began to claw at his skin. Their bony fingers tore into him, ripping at his flesh and tearing it, piece by piece, away from him. Axel screamed, writhing as they tore his body apart. They took everything; his muscles, his organs, eyes and tongue as they peeled away his scalp. When Axel rose again, he was one amongst many; he was of the dead, one of Death's minions now, and he joined in the dance wildly, still screaming in horror-_

Axel woke up with a great gasp, his skin drenched in sweat as he lurched forward, clutching at his chest through his shirt. He made the sign of the cross, whispering his prayers to the Virgin in a weak voice.

"That was some dream," Roxas purred from within his room.

Axel nearly jumped out of his bed, flinching at the closeness of the spirit's voice. "Get out!" he bellowed, baring his teeth.

"No," Roxas responded simply, and Axel's gaze snapped to the end of his cot where Roxas was sitting – naked. Axel could only see the faint outline of the spirit from the moonlight, lighting his pale flesh. Roxas was sitting cross-legged at the end of his cot, watching him carefully with wide eyes and a slowly-spreading smirk. Suddenly Roxas started to crawl forward towards Axel, a vicious grin on his face. Axel looked up and away from the blond's bared body, not wanting to see. When he stopped, Roxas was far too close. Far, far too close; the blond spirit was practically sitting on Axel's knees and looking at him with a wide-eyed wonder. "You dreamed of the _danse._"

"What of it?" Axel asked, his voice wavering.

Roxas' head tilted in a mockery of innocence. "You're developing a fever, Axel."

Axel shook his head. "Simply a nightmare. Now get away," he muttered, shooing the spirit out of his face.

Roxas wasn't fazed. He shrugged. "Don't come running to me when you're oozing blood out of your armpits." The blond slid off his bed and walked off into the corner; Axel's eyes betrayed him, drawn to the pale swell of the boy's ass as he walked. Roxas hopped up onto the table in the corner, turning and watching Axel with glittering eyes as he bent one knee and displayed himself casually.

Axel grumbled and lay back down, despite his growing discomfort and the heat in his head. The dream had left him feeling shaken and terrified, and as a result he fell into a restless sleep.

0o0

What neither man nor spirit knew was that one of the villagers had been about to knock on Axel's door to awaken him for an emergency; on hearing _il dottore_ engage in what seemed like a one-sided conversation, the man panicked and fled to discuss what he'd heard with his comrades.

0o0

When Axel woke, he did so with a pained groan. Every part of his body hurt and felt sore, like he'd been battered and left to lie in his own bed afterwards. It hurt to move his arms, hurt to shift around, hurt to breathe, hurt to do anything.

He looked down at his armpit, and felt his throat close up with shock. There was a lump, several in fact, right in the crease of skin between his armpit and his chest; they felt rather sore to the touch, just like all of the victims he'd seen had noted. When he sat up stiffly, he looked down and nearly fainted. More, scattered across the tops of his thighs and even his groin, making movement near intolerable. He'd been stricken.

"My God," he murmured breathlessly.

"Your God can't help you now," Roxas said, tossing Axel's scalpel in his hand. Axel didn't even have the energy to turn his head towards the malevolent spirit. "You're a dead man walking now. If you can walk, that is."

"This cannot be," Axel protested weakly.

"You should have known this was coming," Roxas continued, catching the scalpel again before rounding on Axel. "You got careless."

"How?"

"All it takes is one little bite," Roxas mused. "You let that woman touch you. And they've boarded up your door, I'm not sure what that is about."

"What?" Axel croaked, rising painfully and stumbling towards the door. He pulled at the door, but it wouldn't budge; he banged on it with his fist, shouting hoarsely for someone to open the door. "Please," Axel called. "Open the door!"

"Not on your life, witch," came a harsh voice from the other side. "You're not going anywhere."

Axel backed away from the door, staggering over his own feet.

"Bunch of really intelligent ones out there, can you tell?" Roxas said snidely.

"This is all your fault!" Axel turned and hissed at the spirit.

"My fault?" Roxas deadpanned. "I'm not the one who sounds like he's up here talking to himself."

"Yes! You've been haunting me for months now, driving me absolutely insane while I try to work. Why?" Axel demanded. "Just tell me why."

Roxas stared at him blankly, then shrugged. "Because you were there. Your guilty conscience won't let go, it just keeps calling and calling and really it's your own fault I'm still here. Granted, it's pretty entertaining watching you panic – but I'm not here for giggles."

"So you're here . . . because of me."

"Good to see you catching on."

"And that's why my mask never deterred you?"

"Why the fuck would your doctor's mask scare me?" Roxas asked bluntly.

Axel didn't respond, and returned to his cot silently. As the day continued, Axel deteriorated. He broke out in sweats and began vomiting over the side of the cot, pain wracking his body as the disease tore him apart from the inside.

"I can save you, you know," Roxas said, suddenly quiet and tender as he dragged the sharp point of the scalpel lightly across Axel's sweat-damp skin after another bought of sickness. "I know how."

Axel tilted his head towards the blond spirit, panting softly. "Get away from me, demon."

"No really, I do," Roxas pressed, settling the sharp point against one of the painful and tender buboes on Axel's armpit. "I could save you, if you want."

"No," Axel groaned.

"Fine, join the rest of the rotting corpses in their mass grave _dottore_," Roxas said harshly. "Fester and rot with them, it's a fitting place for you," he snarled.

"You don't want to save me, you want me dead," Axel hissed, shying away.

"I actually don't particularly care what you decide to do," Roxas amended. "Whether you decide to die like this or not, you don't really have much time left to choose. You die like the hundreds of thousands of wretches that have dropped dead in mud and shit, or they'll burn you."

"And what does your option give me?"

"A way out," Roxas said, playing with the scalpel again, running the pad of his finger along the razor edge of the instrument. "You won't burn, and you won't die like a dog."

Axel bit his lip, turning away as he considered that. "What would I have to do?"

Roxas didn't answer, but let his dark grin spread across his face.

0o0

When the villagers heard naught but silence from _il dottore_'s room for a long while, two of the stronger men broke down the door and stormed in to bring the witch to his death. What they found – or didn't – confused them completely; _il dottore_ was nowhere to be found. The floor was covered in splatters of blood and dried vomit, as were the coarse blankets on the cot – and on the rickety wooden table beside the bed lay the culprit, a silver scalpel still dripping with bright red blood. The only other personal effect that could be found of the mysterious _il dottore_ was his iconic and pale mask, sitting innocently at the end of the cot. Its long beak still retained some of the fragrance of flowers and spices Axel once used, but it was the blank eye sockets in the mask that sent chills up their spines. There was no way that the witch could have escaped – and yet, he was gone.

The town did burn days later, begun by a fire in _il dottore_'s room. The story, according to the few survivors of that town, was that the witch's familiar – this spirit, Roxas, whatever it was – spirited him away in the dead of night to protect him from the stake. A dying woman whispered in her last breath the night the fire began that she'd seen a man with flaming hair and chilling eyes walking through town, a flaxen-haired boy at his back.

Elsewhere, under a full moon in the woods further north, the _danse_ continued ever on. Even now, when children sing of the Black Death in their innocent games, it is never ending.


End file.
